Don't want to take this too far off-topic, but Cherokees are actually pretty expensive to build/race if you wanna go fast. Since they have not real frames to speak of, you have to do a lot of reinforcing and after building a rollcage and after adding everything else that goes into something like that, you're still stuck with a shitty platform. It's not just Cherokees, it's pretty much any/all production vehicles. Why work around the limitation of a body and chassis? It's a waste of time and money. Would be a lot better off figuring out what you want to end up with and just starting from scratch. Or buying someone elses' tube chassis buggy/racecar/whatever. Unless you are married to some romantic notion of driving a particular kind of vehicle. Nothing wrong with that.

Because by the time you've built your own vehicle, you are in an unlimited class (or that odd VW tube frame class). By starting with a "stock" bug, you are racing against other guys with no budget in Class 11. Step it up a bit, and you're in Class 5. The Jeep guys run the JeepSpeed class, and there's Class 8 for full size trucks...

There is nothing rational or smart about amateur racing. It's time consuming, expensive and the payout is a trophy. The only reason to do it is for fun. If it's for fun, you might as well build whatever you want.

I'm just saying it's kind of a false economy. Ask anyone racing jeepspeed. They're more expensive to build and race than some other classes, which is fine and all, but they're slower too. You can only do so much to make racing affordable. The'limited' classes are still dominated by people/teams that spend money to beat the rules. My only point was thag if you want to race on a budget, you can spend less money and go faster in a buggy. That's all.

I'm just saying it's kind of a false economy. Ask anyone racing jeepspeed. They're more expensive to build and race than some other classes, which is fine and all, but they're slower too. You can only do so much to make racing affordable. The'limited' classes are still dominated by people/teams that spend money to beat the rules. My only point was thag if you want to race on a budget, you can spend less money and go faster in a buggy. That's all.

As someone who races a Cherokee in Rallycross events I can assure you that building a Cherokee to race can be cheap if you don't want to hit huge jumps. I have under $500 in my suspension and it can take just about anything I want to put it through. Yes it can be expensive if you buy everything brand new and get the best stuff money can buy.

I am also building a rockcrawler inspired Cherokee and will have under $3000 into the upgrades which includes a full custom 3 link front suspension, Fox 2.5 airshox, 8 point DOM rollcage, and built axles w/35" tires on beadlocks. Building my own parts and buying used parts saves a lot of money.

Anyway... Paul, been curious on what you are packing for spares and supplies. Will be interesting to see. Going to be a tough tradeoff between being fully prepared vs. too much weight. Probably a very good move going with the wagon, space is going to be an issue to I bet. By the time you have 2 spare wheels, probably some control arms, a whole lotta tools, consumables (oil, coolant, filters...) and who knows what else it is going to get tight in there. That is if the plan is still to not have a chase vehicle that can carry some stuff for you.

Anyway... Paul, been curious on what you are packing for spares and supplies. Will be interesting to see. Going to be a tough tradeoff between being fully prepared vs. too much weight. Probably a very good move going with the wagon, space is going to be an issue to I bet. By the time you have 2 spare wheels, probably some control arms, a whole lotta tools, consumables (oil, coolant, filters...) and who knows what else it is going to get tight in there. That is if the plan is still to not have a chase vehicle that can carry some stuff for you.

Doug, I'm working on the spares and supplies list and it will be interesting to see There may be a bivouac chase vehicle at the least. Luke has alluded to this in the M1K thread. Luke's Desert CB and the Subaru are both being run under the Outta Sight banner, so between the two of us, we should be able to have supplies/parts/goodies waiting for us at the Bivouac, even if we are responsible for getting our asses down to them! But of course, OSR members will do what we can to help our friends out along the way!

Of course, in the Mexican 1000, or any multi-stage rally (especially multi-day), navigation, pit strategy and chase strategy can prove to be just as, or even more important than how fast you run on the special stages, and we spend a lot of time working on that aspect and it has proven to work for OSR. However, we probably won't be sharing every exact detail online, as I'm sure you can understand

An example of our high-tech, navigational planning from last year:

I think this might be David's last installment on the motor build....but he will be here with more as we discover and work through issues:

Quote:

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER continued.
Once the case halves are bolted together and pistons installed, the hard part is done. All the thinking and planning on the critical insides is complete. It is just another hour or two to put all the externals on. We did upgrade the oil pump to a high volume unit. Subaru dealers usually have these on the shelf. We also used a high volume water pump. When it is all together, it looks like an average 2.2 liter engine, except it's not.

Oops, wrong motor. This one is for my other customer with real money!

Altogether I think we have about $1700 in the whole job. It should put out 1,000 H.P. but it won't. It would do well to hit 200. A stock engine is 165 @ 5600 RPM.

In an automotive application, where it only requires 15 to 35 hp to cruise 60 mph with an rpm generally around 2400, why would Paul want gobs of horsepower when his average speed will be 40 mph with occasional bursts to 140 mph?

Doug, I'm working on the spares and supplies list and it will be interesting to see There may be a bivouac chase vehicle at the least. Luke has alluded to this in the M1K thread. Luke's Desert CB and the Subaru are both being run under the Outta Sight banner, so between the two of us, we should be able to have supplies/parts/goodies waiting for us at the Bivouac, even if we are responsible for getting our asses down to them! But of course, OSR members will do what we can to help our friends out along the way!

that picture sums up why I want to do this race again so bad. One oversight knocked me out of the race for the day and ruined any chance of a decent overall finish. Thanks again to LoudAL for convincing the local guy with the pickup truck to come rescue me, might still be there otherwise!

Context for those of you who don't know what the pic is about. That is me standing next to my bike with a shreded front wheel. Spokes evidently started to come loose on day 1, this was 8 miles from the end of the first stage of day 2. Cruising along on a fast straight gravel road the wheel pretty much self dissasembled itself. Very scary.

Moral of the story.... check your spokes often especially if they are new wheels!

I have been rallying for several years, and wanting to the Mexican 1000 for, well, a long time. This year my (new) car (umm, truck) is finally done and ready to go! Yay! -only took three years!

I live in Idaho. I was just curious, being as you know the logistics of this race, could there be some money saved by teaming up? Maybe we could split the cost of a chase crew. I noticed, for a "rally" there aren't a whole lotta Rally cars. We would be in different classes. I normally run G5; or 2wd open. But, unless we both run the bageezus out of our cars, a 2 man chase crew might just be doable.

Let me know. If you have any "rally" questions, Id be happy to help you out!

Been very busy at work and doing the holiday thing. I guess it's as good a time as any for some updates

As stated above, David finished up the engine. We mounted up an external oil cooler that is a sandwich type-adapter that installs between the motor and the oil filter and diverts oil to the cooler once it exceeds a certain temperature. I believe its 165 degrees, but I forget right now. David and I mounted the cooler in front of the radiator.

Here is basically what we installed, I can't find the photo I took right now.

Only I bought mine from Rock Auto and saved a few bucks. Besides cooling, another obvious advantage to this is the increased oil capacity too.

One thing about this project which is great is that I am finding all kinds of cool car stuff while searching around the interwebs for parts and things. When you have a project, with a timeline and a specific design, it becomes much more focused of a task when searching around PUI.

I drove the car back from David's shop (about 110 miles) with no issues. In fact, we tried to get the motor to get real hot, but I think with the combination of the coated pistons and the oil cooler, the motor is running at an optimum temp without getting hot. Of course, it is not 100 degrees outside and we are not running full throttle across a dry lake bed either

Here's some more pictures of the coated stuff, the pistons each have three different coatings exhibiting different characteristics. David would have to elaborate on this. I hope to have Dave also talk more about the Lego aspect of Subaru motors as it is pretty damn cool and is part of why there is such a cult following for Subarus.

The next day, I met up with OSR's resident doctor

No, not that one...this one:

Alex was driving through and I happened to be at OSR's designer Lonnie's house so we had lunch. I then let him take the Subaru for a little test run, just to show him how smooth the motor was. There are no photos of this, because for this type of thing, you don't want any evidence floating around. Let's just say that I have a strong feeling based on our little test run that this old beat-up Subaru would have no issues at all reaching triple digit speeds quickly and hanging out there for quite awhile

I mean, if there was ever a need for something like that

Alex left, and as I was driving home, going the speed limit, I noticed the oil light come on and then some serious smoke coming out of the engine compartment!!

I immediately pulled over and shut her down. Well, one of the oil cooler lines had come off and successfully sprayed the entire engine bay with oil! Of course I had no tools and no oil, so I made some calls. The local fire chief (and my neighbor) picked me up, brought me home to get tools and oil, then back to simply tighten the hoses and go. David later told me that he thought I tightened them up (even though he was the one who installed them...lol), I said, "Yep, I must have forgot, sorry"

(Racing hint #245 - Never piss off your mechanic, especially if you don't pay him regularly).

Now, here is a cool part of this story that I think the 2012 M1K OSR crew will appreciate. I was scavenging through the garage looking for a few quarts of oil, and there they were:

See, there was a point in the last M1K where the bike needed oil so OSR's photographer Loud Al, the same guy that helped Doug out when his wheel disintegrated, set out to find some. He came back with something like 8 quarts of the 40 weight pictured above! It was all the little store had.

We did not end up using them all, and somehow they made it back to my garage. I was wondering, what the hell am I going to use straight 40 weight oil in on the mild Oregon Coast. Well, Karma has a way of showing you! I grabbed the Mexican oil and put it into the Subaru. I found it very appropriate that our 2013 M1K race car had oil bought somewhere south of the Bay of LA in Baja running through its veins during its break-in miles!

We did our first oil change at right around 500 miles and then put in some Mobil 1, which is probably what we will run because it is good and cheap at the Walmart near David's shop. We at OSR do not like to get into oil debates, so don't worry about chiming in on this thread about which oil we should use. Like Loud Al has said before, and its proven to be true throughout our adventures: "The most important thing about oil is to make sure you have some in the motor." And that's all I want to say about that.

Ray the welder called, he said the car will be measured this week and tubing ordered.

Then I will be dragging Cory (Twinduro) down from Washington to help prep the body for paint!

As a Subaru nut AND a Honda SL350 nut I think this is just a great thread. I appreciate the common-sense your mechanic showed while building your stonkin' Subie engine. Does he want to refresh my old 1989 BMW 325is engine? I think your wife is cool for wanting to be your Navigator: keep that gal forever!

I have been rallying for several years, and wanting to the Mexican 1000 for, well, a long time. This year my (new) car (umm, truck) is finally done and ready to go! Yay! -only took three years!

I live in Idaho. I was just curious, being as you know the logistics of this race, could there be some money saved by teaming up? Maybe we could split the cost of a chase crew. I noticed, for a "rally" there aren't a whole lotta Rally cars. We would be in different classes. I normally run G5; or 2wd open. But, unless we both run the bageezus out of our cars, a 2 man chase crew might just be doable.

PM Sent and post a link to your truck build!

Quote:

Originally Posted by southforkspeedster

Wow Paul and Laura, this is cool stuff

Dang, I used to know a guy named southforkspeedster! Nice guy, but always seemed to break his riding buddies

Quote:

Originally Posted by TwinDuro

Also, if you and David decide to swap the Falconer V-12 into the sube, make sure to get the nitrous-swilling 9.8 liter version and not the wussy 6.5 liter one...

Duh! That's a no-brainer. Now, get your ass down here and start cracking on the paint!!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Irish1

As a Subaru nut AND a Honda SL350 nut I think this is just a great thread. I appreciate the common-sense your mechanic showed while building your stonkin' Subie engine. Does he want to refresh my old 1989 BMW 325is engine? I think your wife is cool for wanting to be your Navigator: keep that gal forever!

Unfortunately, David has made it clear to me that he hates working on European cars almost as much as welder Ray hates working on Japanese cars! Of course, money talks!! His contact information is located in the background of one of the piston photos above
As for my wife, yep, she is a keeper, she's beautiful, wants to rally and she makes more money than me!